


The Dawn of a New Day

by EllieMurasaki, wand3rlust



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: srs2012, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-01-26
Packaged: 2017-11-27 01:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/pseuds/EllieMurasaki, https://archiveofourown.org/users/wand3rlust/pseuds/wand3rlust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ruby doesn't die, and Anna hasn't had the chance to hear that Ruby broke the final seal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dawn of a New Day

[ ](http://i1110.photobucket.com/albums/h455/wand3rlust/dawnofanewday_zps076af51e.jpg)

"He's gonna repay you in ways you can't even imagine!" Ruby says. Her grip on the door Dean's trying to bash in slips, but she catches it in time to slam it in his face.

Not in time to keep him from yelling "Sammy!" through the crack.

"You came here to save the world," Ruby reminds Sam. " _You did._ No more hellfire, Sam! No one else will ever become a demon!" Remembering what it was like to be human—that was never a lie.

"'You did create me from fire and him from clay'," Sam murmurs.

"You understand," Ruby says. His face says he doesn't. "People who go through hell are never the same after," she tries to explain. "Like firing clay. Don't you _want_ no new demons?"

"What will he do to the rest of us?" Sam asks.

White light bursts out of the doorway drawn in Lilith's blood.

 

The ground is hard, the air is warm and bright, and something smells. Ruby dismisses the last as inconsequential: her senses are sharper than Sam's, so she can detect the odor of decomposition-on-pause from her body even through scented body wash. But she has the feeling of having just woken up after a pleasant dream, which can't be. Demons can't dream.

She opens her eyes.

The convent chapel. Lilith's latest body, sprawled, dead. The dust on the floor has marks in the shape of two sets of shoes and the pattern traced by Lilith's blood. Ruby's the only one there.

Did...Lucifer pass her by?

That doesn't make sense. She _freed_ him! Shouldn't he have rewarded—oh, that's right, angels need vessels. Castiel needs that Illinois man, or his daughter, though Anna might not need anyone but herself—

_?_

That thought was _not_ Ruby.

_?!_

Anna?

_ruby? trapped can't help sorry_

Not that Ruby _needs_ help. Not that _Ruby_ needs help. _Do **you** need help?_ Ruby thinks carefully.

_heaven prison need out help please_

_Is there, like, a key I can steal?_ Ruby wonders.

_maybe_ A pause. _sleep dream talk easy? no maybe spy?_

Anna's not being very coherent...but maybe she can't be, and maybe she can't be straightforward even if she could put a sentence together properly. The problem is, and she tells Anna so, _demons don't dream._

_oh_ A longer pause, during which it occurs to Ruby that she doesn't have to stay put while praying. (Demon. Praying. The absurdity...but it's Anna.) Her Mustang is still there, keys still in her pocket, and Ruby's well off convent property when Anna returns with _borrow energy maybe? I break out?_

_However I can help,_ Ruby says, then puts it together and parks beside the road, just in time to black out again.

 

She comes to in a crap motel bed. Anna's cross-legged on the other one, glaring at a half-assembled hex bag that vibrates with magic done and gone. "Good morning," she says when Ruby sits up, though the light through the window suggests sunset. "Sweet dreams?"

Ruby opens her mouth—they just had this discussion; demons _can't_ dream—but the memory of a strawberry-blonde Venetian woman in her arms is fresh in Ruby's mind. Her name was—she grasps the initial J sound and the rest slips away. Giovanna? Giuliana?

"Demons can't dream," Ruby says anyway.

"You were making plenty of happy noises," Anna says, and the teasing is so like Gisella that Ruby can only stop for a moment and stare. "Thanks for the energy loan, by the way. How do I fix this hex bag? I think I shorted it out when I followed the energy drain back to you."

"I'll make a new one," Ruby says. "Where's my kit?"

Anna swings her legs off the bed and vanishes. Then she's standing beside Ruby, holding out the backpack that contains Ruby's magical supplies.

"Instant gratification," says Ruby. "Nice." She takes the backpack and digs through it till she finds chicken foot bones, spider eggs, lavender, hemp, goofer dust, large enough cloth. Anna watches her quietly, again like Gianetta, though usually Giosetta had been watching weaving or cooking, not witchcraft, and had had sewing in her hands.

Finally Anna says, "CNN says a Category 4 hurricane formed practically on top of Texas, starting right after Lilith blew the top off Lucifer's cage."

She keeps talking, but Ruby doesn't hear a word. 'Right after the cage opened' means the first moment Lucifer could affect the topside world, and 'hurricane' with no warning means a whole lot of dead people, and _that was not supposed to happen_.

Lucifer was supposed to be _grateful_ to be released. Grateful enough, or selfish enough, to _take back_ all the changes he wrought on damned souls when neither they nor he had a choice in the matter. Grateful or selfish enough to take back the hellfire, to undo the damage done to the clay in the kiln.

Not—not a _danger_.

"Ruby?" Giacinta says, and it's not her, not her at all. "What's wrong?"

"Penso feci cazzata," she says, "feci cazzata _cattiva_[1] ," and then she has to lie back and laugh. Cattiva. Captive by the devil.

"Corvata?" says Giuditta finally, and the use of her name gets Ruby's attention. "What did you do, that you only knew you did wrong when I told you?"

Ruby looks over. Fire red, not strawberry blonde: this is Anna, Anna Elizabeth Milton with all the power that Anael once called and again calls her own, not Giada Mariscotti. Not Giada.

"I lied to Sam Winchester," Ruby says. No. 'Ruby' is a creature born of hellfire and deception. She never admitted a name between losing herself to Alastair and borrowing the name on her first blonde host's credit cards after slipping out the devil's gate in Wyoming, but this body is as raven-haired as the one buried in Firenze[2]. "I lied," Corvata repeats, "because I thought Lucifer free would be a good thing."

The angels threatened, Sam said, to kill a whole town, just to make sure they got the witch planning to open one of the seals holding Lucifer in. She deliberately engineered the breaking of the last one, and she broke one of the middle ones herself.

She closes her eyes, expecting the angel to kill her.

"Corvata," says Anna, and there's a soft touch on her hand. So like Giada. Corvata opens her eyes and sits up. "We can fix it."

**Author's Note:**

> [1] I think I fucked up. I fucked up _bad_. [back]  
> [2] Florence [back]


End file.
